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Feedback spillovers across tasks, self-confidence and competitiveness

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  • Banerjee, Ritwik
  • Gupta, Nabanita Datta
  • Villeval, Marie Claire

Abstract

Does feedback on success in a task increase individuals' beliefs about their chance to succeed in a subsequent, unrelated, task? Does feedback on failure have a symmetric effect? Is the distortion of beliefs, possibly due to motivated beliefs, mistakes in updating or the feeling of having a lucky day, heterogeneous across individuals, in particular according to their status in the society? Conducting an artefactual field experiment in India with participants from different castes, we show that feedback on success in a forced competition in a first task increases winners' self-confidence and competitiveness in the subsequent task. Such feedback spillovers on self-confidence are asymmetric and heterogeneous according to status and more likely for already more confident individuals.

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  • Banerjee, Ritwik & Gupta, Nabanita Datta & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2020. "Feedback spillovers across tasks, self-confidence and competitiveness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 127-170.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:123:y:2020:i:c:p:127-170
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2020.07.002
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    Cited by:

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    2. Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch & Marco A Schwarz & Chi Trieu & Jana Willrodt, 2023. "Perceived Fairness and Consequences of Affirmative Action Policies," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(656), pages 3099-3135.
    3. Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah & Trieu, Chi & Willrodt, Jana, 2020. "Perceived fairness and consequences of affirmative action policies," DICE Discussion Papers 338, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    4. Ritwik Banerjee & Priyama Majumdar, 2023. "Exponential growth bias in the prediction of COVID‐19 spread and economic expectation," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(358), pages 653-689, April.
    5. Alexander Coutts & Boon Han Koh & Zahra Murad, 2024. "The signals we give: Performance feedback, gender, and competition," Working Papers in Economics & Finance 2024-02, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group.
    6. Sharma, Karmini & Castagnetti, Alessandro, 2023. "Demand for information by gender: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 172-202.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Feedback; Spillovers; Self-confidence; Status; Motivated beliefs; Experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

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